Blogs

Blogs

ASCOconnection.org is a forum for the exchange of views on topical issues in the field of oncology. The views expressed in the blogs, comments, and forums belong to the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. Please read the Commenting Guidelines.

There is plenty of research that proves what we intuitively know: a person who is well informed and invested in her treatment is more likely to seek out the resources she needs to cope with the physical and emotional side effects of rigorous treatment.

I like to consider myself an “evolved” clinician—one who believes in the patient’s voice, personally invested in shared decision-making, always ready to support my patient’s decisions, as long as I know it’s informed by the best data I have available, even when it is not the course I would want...

This is a story of how small things really can make a big difference: a nurse anticipating a problem for a patient, a biomedical engineer open to collaboration, and a care provider taking an incremental approach to managing a patient's distress.

She had been a patient for several years, and I still remember meeting her that first time: Her breast cancer was stage IV at diagnosis, already established in her bones; she was scared; she was in pain. Surgery was taken off the table and she was referred for medical therapy. We had discussed...

I was fortunate to begin my radiation oncology training on our Chairman’s service, working with lung cancer expert Dr. Ken Rosenzweig. At that time, one of my earliest clinical experiences was seeing a woman who had a history of early-stage lung cancer treated with radiation.

The past year had been a tremendously exciting time to be an oncologist, and to be a lung cancer oncologist in particular. It seems we hardly have time to get used to one newly approved agent before another one becomes available.

When is an advocate not an advocate? When should a spouse step back and let the husband make a treatment decision? When should an adult child of a man with prostate cancer let their father decide what is best for him? These are questions that, fortunately, I don’t have to ask all that often. Most...

The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), which passed earlier this year, repealed the fundamentally flawed Sustainable Growth Rate formula and introduced significant changes in how Medicare will pay oncologists for the care they provide in the coming years.

Helen* had received multiple lines of chemotherapy for a stage IV breast cancer. She had been off treatment for quite a few months now and declined hospice because she did not like strangers in the house.

As physicians practicing in the worlds of oncology and gynecology, we have used this word countless times—hope that cancer will not return, hope that intimacy can be restored, hope that parenthood can be realized despite cancer.